#3 - More than a year ago, the city announced that police

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Assumption. The correct answer choice is (E)

The error in this stimulus is that it equates, without support, the number of speeding tickets written to a conclusion that the exact same amount of resources are being used to write those tickets. The argument fails to consider that perhaps the police who continue to write tickets have simply learned to be more efficient, or are using some type of technology that allows them to write the same amount of tickets using fewer resources. The correct assumption answer choice must therefore defend against any attacks on this weakness of the argument.

Answer Choice (A): Remember that this is an assumption question. For the stimulus argument to be true, does every member of the police force need to be qualified to work on combating the city's drug problem? Of course not.

Answer Choice (B): Whether or not drug related crime is a serious problem does not affect the overall argument that the police chief says resources are tied up on drug related crime, while the stimulus author disputes that. No issues have been raised regarding the wisdom of tying up resources in fighting drug related crime; the issues are simply whether or not the transfer of resources has occurred.

Answer Choice (C): Again, the relative importance of fighting various crimes is not the issue here; we're only concerned with whether or not a transfer of resources has actually occurred.

Answer Choice (D): The stimulus has already established that no crackdown on illegally parked cars has occurred. Therefore, regardless of whether both things could happen at once, the fact is that they aren't happening at once. In fact, this answer choice contradicts one of the author's basic premises — that you cannot increase resources in any other area of law enforcement without decreasing the number of speeding tickets.

Answer Choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. In order to defend against the potential outside arguments that police have become more efficient or have begun using new technology, it is necessary for us to establish that there is no way for the police to continue their output of speeding tickets while simultaneously diverting resources to drug-related crimes.

[Johnclem]

Hi
For this question I felt comfortable with the stimulus. But I am very uncomfortable with crossing out answer choice D . I read the explanation for this question , but D is really upsetting me and can't seem to get rid of it. Here is my detailed explanation:

1- the city promised to crack down on illegal parked cars. ( resources would be diverted from writing speeding tickets).
2- no cracking down has been happening.
3- the police say this is because resources from speeding tickets had to be diverted to city's drug problem .
4- yet the city is still wrong as many tickets as ever.
c: therefore the excuse about resources being tied up in fighting drug related crime is simply not true.


Analysis : the author is assuming that if police were really dealing with the drug issue they wouldn't be able to write tickets. But this is not true. They could still write as many tickets as they want, and have resources ( or money made from writing tickets ) go to the drug issue.

A) wrong : qualification of police officers is irrelevant .
B) wrong : don't care about how serious the police think it is or it isn't ,
C) wrong: being equally important is irrelevant to whether the police are lying or not.

*****D ) i have an issue with this ! The word "without " translates this sentence to mean : The police could NOT be cracking down on illegally parked cars or combat drug problem without having to reduce writing speeding tickets . So how is this not necessary for the argument to be true ?
Now necessary assumption negation test : ( I would read this as it's written in the text, since I already had to negate it using without ) and this completely destroys the argument.

E) correct : negated this destroys the argument .


- John

[David Boyle]

Hi
For this question I felt comfortable with the stimulus. But I am very uncomfortable with crossing out answer choice D . I read the explanation for this question , but D is really upsetting me and can't seem to get rid of it. Here is my detailed explanation:

1- the city promised to crack down on illegal parked cars. ( resources would be diverted from writing speeding tickets).
2- no cracking down has been happening.
3- the police say this is because resources from speeding tickets had to be diverted to city's drug problem .
4- yet the city is still wrong as many tickets as ever.
c: therefore the excuse about resources being tied up in fighting drug related crime is simply not true.


Analysis : the author is assuming that if police were really dealing with the drug issue they wouldn't be able to write tickets. But this is not true. They could still write as many tickets as they want, and have resources ( or money made from writing tickets ) go to the drug issue.

A) wrong : qualification of police officers is irrelevant .
B) wrong : don't care about how serious the police think it is or it isn't ,
C) wrong: being equally important is irrelevant to whether the police are lying or not.

*****D ) i have an issue with this ! The word "without " translates this sentence to mean : The police could NOT be cracking down on illegally parked cars or combat drug problem without having to reduce writing speeding tickets . So how is this not necessary for the argument to be true ?
Now necessary assumption negation test : ( I would read this as it's written in the text, since I already had to negate it using without ) and this completely destroys the argument.

E) correct : negated this destroys the argument .


- John

Hello John,

When you say "The word "without " translates this sentence to mean : The police could NOT be cracking down on illegally parked cars or combat drug problem without having to reduce writing speeding tickets", that may not be true. Answer D is sort of difficult to diagram, since it says the police "could", instead of "must" or something. If we say, "If the police could NOT be cracking down on illegally parked cars or combatting the drug problem, that means they have to reduce writing speeding tickets"", that just sounds strange. A common-sense translation of answer D is, "They don't need to reduce writing speeding tickets, no matter what else they do."
And that is a sort of opposite answer to answer E, which basically says that the police can't divert resources to drug crime and write as many speeding tickets at the same time.

Hope this helps,
David

[Johnclem]

Hello,
Thank you for your response. I get stuck on these answer choices where I see words like without , until and except . At which I don't know if I am to read like English or negate it . Any advice on this?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi John,

With Assumption answers, on the first pass through you just read it as English and eliminate any losers. Then, once you've eliminated a few answers, apply the Assumption Negation Technique only on the answers you feel are most promising. You should not be negating all five answers right off the bat—that costs too much time. And, remember that answer featuring Unless, et al, are conditional answers, which makes them even easier to negate in most instances (just deny the necessity of the necessary condition).

Thanks!

[caroline222]

Can someone please walk me through the steps of how to negate answer choice D in this question?

Thank you so much!!!!

[Robert Carroll]

Caroline,

I think a relatively straightforward way to negate answer choice (D) is to note something about the form of it: "You can do X and Y without doing Z." We could translate this into something about everyday life to make clear what it's saying: "You can purchase a burger and fries without having to purchase a drink." What's the negation of that statement? Well, because that statement says you're allowed to buy a burger and fries and not buy a drink, the negation would be something like "If you buy a burger and fries, you must buy a drink." Applying that to answer choice (D), the negation of that answer should be something like "If the police crack down on illegally parked cars and combat the drug problem, then they would have to reduce writing speeding tickets."

But wait, isn't that sort of what the author thinks? If they're really cracking down on illegal parking and combating drugs, they'd have to reduce speeding tickets. The fact that they aren't reducing speeding tickets is taken by the author to indicate that they're not really doing the first two things. So the negation of answer choice (D) seems to STRENGTHEN the argument. Remember what we're looking for with the Assumption Negation technique - the negation of the correct answer choice should decisively WEAKEN the argument. We found the opposite while negating answer choice (D), so that confirms that answer choice (D) is wrong. In fact, this seems to confirm our explanation in the first post of the thread above that the answer itself seems to weaken the argument. If its negation strengthens the argument, as we found, the answer itself must have been bad for the argument, and certainly not an assumption necessary for it.

Robert Carroll